


Old Friends

by lanayrusea



Category: Transistor (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-21 04:34:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15549717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanayrusea/pseuds/lanayrusea
Summary: Her boxer taught her to brawl. He never thought she’d have to.





	Old Friends

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place before the events of the game, before Red and the Boxer are together (although I personally headcanon that it was never really official until the end of the game—I love that slow burn). Please note that there are some very vague references to a rape that never happened. Hope you enjoy!!

He has been waiting in Highrise for an hour.

All the message said was, _Go to my apartment_. He has a key, has had one for more than a year. Red’s career may have been slow to start, but it isn’t new. He remembers his first day—she had been laughing.

_A bodyguard? What, am I important?_

_Of course, miss. It’s studio policy that none of our contract-holders go without basic protection._

_Is he gonna, like, follow me everywhere?_

He had blushed at that. He was right there, and she wasn’t even talking to him.

_If you ask him to go someplace with you, he will. He answers first to the studio, so there may be some occasions on which he will be accompanying you whether you like it or not. Mostly, it will be to keep track of you in large crowds, during travel, and by and large during your work for the studio._

_Will he get my flatbread for me?_

Then he had spoken: _He might if you ask nicely._

She glanced at him, surprised, and instantly he knew she regretted what she had said. The look on her face was genuine, unassuming—not the look of a celebrity driven by egotism, but of an earnest young muse, embarrassed by her own talent. Maybe he fell in love right then.

 _Sorry_ , she had said. _I’ll be nice._

The man from the studio laughed and clapped her on the shoulder. She didn’t flinch, didn’t even look away.

 _No fighting, now, kids_ , the man said. _And no ditching your guard, Miss Red._

_No, sir._

She ditched him that night. The first of many.

  

_lady without a voice. gent without a body._

  

At the half-hour mark, he starts to pace around her apartment. It isn’t big, but there’s lots to look at: posters, records, books, teacups, an upright piano squeezed into one corner. Thing is, he’s seen it all so much that it’s nearly like being in his own apartment at this point. He’s seen it change, too, pictures walking in and out of frames, curtains replaced, the time she recruited him to help paint her bedroom. That had been fun—he smiles as he thinks of it. (She had picked a simple dove gray, sincere like she was, that had looked beautiful splattered in her hair and on her cheeks. For a week she had slept on the couch and come into work crabby with a crick in her neck.) But then his unease returns.

He’s always felt comfortable here, the exception being now. Red has cycled through a few boyfriends and girlfriends in the time he’s known her, which has sometimes made his coming over awkward, but he’s learnt she always stops bringing them home after the first couple weeks. It’s inexplicable, but he figures it’s not his business. He never likes any of them—they’re all fine, they just aren’t _him_ —and says so honestly when she asks. She always asks his opinion of them, and always seems to, albeit with less fervor, agree.

Red is single right now, though there is a woman, a little socialite, into whose acquaintance he has been forced simply by the amount of times she has approached Red. He likes her less than the others.

At the quarter-to mark, he leaves to check the OVC Terminal again. There’s nothing. He sends a message and goes back.

Red has always been able to take care of herself. Her voice can fight as well as it can sing. The occasions he’s had to step into a situation on her behalf have been few and far between—generally, it’s enough to stay in the shadows and watch, to let himself be a warning. When it’s Sybil Reisz, though, he has no problem intervening. There’s something wrong with the woman. He sees her coming, tracking them like a machine, and takes Red by the arm if she hasn’t already taken him by his and he leads her away on some pretense, some excuse, the whole thing is a ruse but neither of them cares because something bad something corrupt radiates off that woman and no one else seems to feel it. But they know. They know.

The truth is, he isn’t Red’s bodyguard anymore—that might be what it says on the tax return, but he stopped being her bodyguard the day he taught her to throw a hook. That was after someone tried to jump her—just a petty thief, probably not even someone who recognized her, especially not back then. But that was the day, the first day, he had been scared for her. She had laughed then, too, the same as when they met. He has learnt by now that it’s her nervous laugh.

_My boxer wants to teach me to box?_

_As a precaution. I don’t think you’ll need it._

_No?_

He had shrugged. _I’ll be there next time._

Red is good at fighting. She’s efficient about it, learned the fundamentals and took them to heart. _So long as I can hit something without breaking my own hands._ That’s always the stipulation: that nothing he teaches her could hurt her hands.

He stops in his pacing and looks at the upright. It’s a relic, older than anything else in the apartment, including Red herself. Its lid is covered in books and sheet music and staff paper, and he knows in the bench compartment is more of the same. Red prefers modern music, but she’s classically trained. Does two-octave scales every day and hates every minute of it. He doesn’t know much about the technicalities of playing or writing music, but he’s certain it’s that tenacity that sets her apart from the crowd. That makes her who she is.

It’s a little frightening, sometimes. He tries not to wonder if tenacity is something that can run out.

It’s the hour. Red isn’t home yet.

  

_that’s my star. could always handle yourself. just fine._

It’s getting late—properly late. He remembers being out with her this late on a thousand different occasions, mostly for work or publicity reasons, but sometimes just as friends, too. When they were painting her bedroom he stayed the night once, and she had played him any song he could think of as they made their way through her special-occasion wine. Or the time more recently they had been out at a local gig, Red wearing a scarf over her hair like a mask, and he had come down with one of those insta-bugs that incapacitates you for exactly twenty-four hours then goes on its merry way. He felt bad because he knew she loved this band, but she took him back to Highrise and let him stay the few harrowing hours until morning. He doesn’t remember much of that night, just bits and pieces of fever-induced ramblings as he lay on her couch:

_Why do you take me places? You don’t need me._

She had looked offended. _Need you? I_ like _you._

_Hah. She likes me._

_Well, she won’t if you throw up on her rug._

_Hey, I’m not a baby._

She snickered. _Boxer baby._

He’s stopped pacing by now and has begun to rummage through her kitchen. He isn’t hungry—far from it, he’s too nervous to eat—but figures it’s the least personal space in the house and he can fidget with her knives to his heart’s content. He opens drawers and cupboards and shuts them, unconcerned that the neighbors might be trying to sleep, and watches the clock. He thinks it’s toying with him. He thinks it’s running how it wants to, with no respect for the factual flow of time or for his shot nerves or for Red, stuck out there somewhere where she can’t find a Terminal or can’t get home or needs him maybe she needs him and he’s just standing here in her kitchen what good is he what good is a guard that _can’t_

he hears his name.

“Red,” he says. “Red?”

The front door shuts. He abandons his post in the kitchen and goes to meet her, her back is turned and his heart is hammering and there’s _mud_ in her hair, why is there mud in—and her sweater is torn, and there’s blood on her hand, what is _happening_ —

And she falls.

“Red!”

He catches her just barely and his knees buckle in surprise from the whole weight of her body, but she’s _speaking_ , she hasn’t fainted. He lifts her into his arms and takes her to the couch, refusing to give in to his own panic.

“What happened?” he says. “Red? Can you hear me?”

She opens her eyes, their color eaten up by the pupils. “Hello. My boxer.”

“Can you sit up?”

She takes his hand with her left—her skin is clammy—and lets him pull off her sweater. The thing is ruined, dirty and bloody and torn in several places. The hem of her undershirt is ripped. And on her right arm are two huge abrasions, raw and engrossing in that way only flesh can be, exuding the kind of heat that was never meant to broach open air. But they’re friction burns—they don’t bleed. The blood on her skin, her clothes, her hair, seems to have come from her dominant right hand. But it’s dried now, so caked in with the dirt that he can’t see the wound it came from. He tosses the sweater aside, and she leans back against the pillow.

“I’m getting the first aid kit,” he says. “Don’t move.”

“No worries there,” she mumbles.

He retrieves the kit from her bathroom and soaks and wrings out a hand towel, his mind and his pulse racing. _What could have possibly…?_

When he returns the sight of her freezes him in place. She looks even paler than she did twenty seconds ago. Her eyes are closed, her hair sticks to her forehead and neck, and her chest rises shallowly with each breath. She doesn’t look like Red.

He snaps out of it. He kneels on the floor next to her and lies the damp towel across her forehead, then opens the first aid kit and takes out gauze and antiseptic. She makes a faint noise above him, something almost a laugh.

He looks up, startled. “Are you okay?”

“I hit him,” she whispers, grinning.

“What? Who?”

She doesn’t seem to hear.

“Just like you taught me,” she says. “Look. No broken fingers.”

Red raises her hand weakly. Her knuckles are bruised and cut—not burnt, cut—but otherwise it looks fine.

 _What the hell did you do?_ He tips the bottle of antiseptic over a cotton pad and says, “This might sting a little.”

“Darling, I can’t feel a damn thing.”

Deciding to set this alarming new information aside for now, he dabs the cotton pad over the injury on her upper arm, then uses a new one on her lower arm, and a third on her hand. Then he unravels the roll of gauze and begins to bandage the burns.

“Now I’ll look like you,” Red says, slurring. “Matchy-matchy.”

“Matchy-matchy,” he agrees, and ties off the second bandage. “Can you hold your fingers straight for me?”

She does, though her hand is quivering. He holds her wrist as he tries to wrap the gauze around her fingers correctly, but it’s difficult doing it from the opposite angle. He gets up and perches on the edge of the couch, his chest against her shoulder, and reaches around her to finish tying the bandage.

She makes the noise again, that half-laugh. “You’re bad at this.”

“Just a creature of habit.” He kisses her cheek. “Can you stand?”

“No.”

He doesn’t reply, just gathers her into his arms and carries her to her dove-gray bedroom. The towel compress is lost somewhere along the way. He sets her gently in bed, then retrieves the compress and a tall glass of water.

“Drink all of that,” he says as he sets it on her bedside table.

She doesn’t move.

“I’m going to find clean clothes for you,” he says, “and if you haven’t finished that by the time I do—”

She waves a hand at him weakly, then reaches for the glass. He begins to rummage through her drawers, figuring a T-shirt and loose shorts will do. Her clothes are organized with the neatness of someone who is more bothered by clutter than they are compelled by cleanliness, but he finds what he’s looking for without any run-ins with lingerie or stray tampons. He gives her the clothes, then leaves to refill the water glass.

He’s shutting off the faucet when he hears his name again, and rushes to her room.

“Is something wrong?” he says.

She’s sitting up and wearing her clean clothes, looking faint. Maybe even that effort overexerted her. She says, “I can’t…”

He sets down the water glass. “Can’t what?”

She makes as if to reach behind herself, then stops. Her movements look clumsy. She says, “Unhook my bra, please.”

He feels the heat rise into his face, but this isn’t the time to indulge his own personal anxieties. He does as he’s asked, slips his hands up under her shirt and undoes the clasp with thumb and index finger, trying not to touch her bare skin. She’s still clammy, though not so much as before.

“There,” he says, stepping away. She pulls the bra out from under her shirt and drops it over the side of the bed unceremoniously, into a pile with the rest of her dirty clothes. Then she collapses into her pillows, and he helps her pull up the covers.

“Boxer,” she murmurs.

“Yes?”

“Thanks.”

He reaches out and brushes the hair off her forehead. “Red,” he says, “are you okay?”

She hums. She sounds half-asleep already.

“I’ll be here,” he says. “My muse.”

 

_hello world. you don’t look so good._

 

When he wakes up, the water is running. He’s sprawled on the couch, face-first in a pillow that smells like her detergent, and he’s tired. Blearily he sits up. That water—it’s the bathtub. Red must be awake. Outside, Cloudbank’s perfect sky has barely begun to lighten, and the clock (evil, lying thing) ticks away doggedly. He can’t have slept for more than four hours. He gets up, washes his mouth in the kitchen sink, and puts on a kettle for tea.

 _What_ , he thinks, _the ever-living hell?_

This thought, and variations thereupon, are the only thing in his head as he takes two mugs down from the cupboard and opens a box of chamomile. The whole thing feels far away. Did that all really happen? Did he just stay the night and have some bizarre panic dream?

The bath shuts off, and the kettle boils. He pours water, listening. Soon enough her bedroom door shuts and he hears footsteps. He leaves the kitchen.

“Red,” he says.

She freezes. For a moment all he can do is stare at her.

“How are you?” he says finally.

There’s a pause. Then she exhales and collapses onto the couch.

“Fuck,” she mutters. “Fuck me.”

He flounders. “Are—are you—”

“I’m fine,” she says. “I’m okay. Just…tired.”

They look at each other. He sits down.

“Tell me what happened,” he says.

Red tugs a blanket off the back of the couch and wraps it around herself, knees up to her chest. Her hair, damp from the bath, has already begun to curl.

“I went out,” she says. “Last night at about…I don’t know. Ten. Normal going-out hours. Just to that bar past Jan’s. There was a band playing I wanted to see. That’s all. Normal.”

That is normal. Usually this kind of story ends with _And I drunkenly ordered three servings of flatbread and ate them all_.

“It’s a small place, you remember it? Not really the kind of joint you just happen upon. The same people go every weekend. Well, Sybil Reisz was there.”

He starts. “ _Sybil Reisz?_ ”

Red nods. “It was weird. At first I thought I was imagining things. She was even wearing that sunhat she always wears to publicity events. And she had this man with her, this tall hulking guy in a dark coat. Go figure she’s got her own boxer.”

He scowls. “That who you hit?”

“Yeah. Something was…she bought me a drink. I watched the whole thing, I don’t know what happened.” Red tugs at her hair. “I mean, you saw. I was…I hardly remember. My head still hurts.”

“You mean you were drugged?”

“I wasn’t drunk, that’s for sure.”

It doesn’t make sense. He asks, “Then what?”

“Then…I don’t know. I remember seeing it all but I don’t know what we were saying. It wasn’t—it wasn’t what it sounds like. I mean, I don’t think she was hitting on me any more than usual.” She shakes her head. “This was about…something else.”

“But you don’t remember what.”

“I think the drug sort of—worked backwards? I don’t even remember what we were talking about before I drank it.”

He’s alarmed by this and tries not to show it. “When did you start to come around?”

Red hesitates. “I can’t give you a time if that’s what you’re asking. The first thing I definitely remember is arriving here. Like, I remember sending you that message through the Terminal, but I don’t remember what it said. I remember hitting her bodyguard, but I don’t remember why.”

“Is that how you got those injuries?” he says.

She looks at her arm—the bandage on her hand is sullied but the other two are fine. Friction burns don’t bleed. They’ll still need changing soon, though.

“I guess it must have been. I think I broke my glass, and that’s how my hand got cut, and then we got into…” She stops. “No. That isn’t right.”

“What?”

“I think something else happened,” she says. “I mean, there’s no way we had a full-on brawl in a packed bar. We went outside. For some reason.”

He says, “It probably wasn’t too hard to tell you what to do under those circumstances.”

“Maybe not. But clearly I had enough sense left to defend myself.”

“Maybe you hit first.”

She smirks. “There’s a thought.”

“No,” he says, “I’m serious. Sybil Reisz needed to talk to you so direly that she had to drug you? Whatever you talked about—how inconceivable is it that you were so upset you threw a punch?”

“Or she drugged me to attack me.”

“And let you go to tell the tale?”

“Maybe the drug was supposed to work better.”

“Red, please don’t joke.”

“How are you supposed to have a serious conversation with someone who’s high out of their mind!”

It’s a good point. He doesn’t have an answer.

“You’re sure,” he says slowly, “that it wasn’t—”

“Yes,” she says.

He looks at her. She stiffens.

“You don’t believe me,” she says, in her fighting voice.

Helplessly, he says, “Can I?”

Red glares at him. “Sybil wouldn’t do that. She cares so much about having a clean record. And she likes me too much to—to resort to that.”

They fall silent. Somewhere, the clock is ticking. He wants to rip out its gears. But he settles for fidgeting with his hands and thinking.

“Maybe,” he says at last, “she didn’t want to talk, or fight, or anything.”

“Just the kind of gal who drugs people for kicks, huh?”

He ignores this. “Maybe there was something she wanted to tell you.”

Red laughs nastily. “Important enough to tell me, unimportant enough to make me forget.”

“Maybe not _unimportant_ enough,” he says. “Maybe secret enough. Call it—call it an act of conscience. She tells you a secret while you can’t possibly retain it and so suffers no consequences. Something she thinks you ought to know, but can’t truly tell you.”

“That isn’t conscience, it’s cowardice.”

“I’m just trying to think from her perspective.”

“Well, from my perspective I got drugged, I got beat up, and I didn’t even get to see the damn show.”

And to his surprise, she begins to cry.

The entire conversation—the recollection, the speculation—dissolves in an instant. He remembers this is real, and Red is hurt. It isn’t even daybreak. Their stupid tea is cold.

“Red,” he says, “I’m sorry. I’m being insensitive. This isn’t helping.”

She rubs her face with her good hand and mutters, “Not your fault.”

“It certainly isn’t _your_ fault.” He pulls the blanket tighter around her shoulders and brushes her hair away from her eyes. She’s still pale.

“I made us tea,” he says. “It’s cold, but I can reheat it.”

She shrugs. He stands, touches her hand, and heads to the kitchen.

The mugs are sitting just where he left them, flat and unsympathetic, like a tactless relative. He doesn’t want his anymore. He reheats Red’s, retrieves a couple of painkillers, and returns to the living room.

“I brought some medicine, if you want it,” he says as he enters.

“Okay.”

He sets the mug on the side table, but she doesn’t reach for it. She reaches for him. He sits down and pulls her into his arms, careful not to graze her injuries. They must hurt.

She says, “I just wish I remembered.”

“Red…”

Her crying is over—Red has never cried much. But she’s shivering, and after a few minutes she turns in his arms to take the painkillers. When she rests her head back against his chest her eyes are closed, her brow knit. No doubt she’s exhausted. She slept even less than he did.

“Bed?” he asks.

For a moment she doesn’t reply. Then, she says, “You kissed me last night.”

His heart stalls out and he hopes she didn’t feel it. “What?” he says. “No—I mean—sort of. Not really. You make it sound so…so…”

She shrugs. “It’s okay.”

“It—it is?”

“You’re my best friend.”

The words make his chest ache. _You’re my best friend, too_ , he thinks. But what he says is, “You should sleep.”

Another pause.

“I was scared,” she whispers.

He nuzzles her, his mouth in her hair. “You were brave. You need rest, okay? Nothing else is going to happen to you.”

Red says nothing. But she is brave, and smart, and resolutely sensible, so after a few minutes she detaches herself and gets up from the couch. He stands and walks with her, and she holds his wrist with the grip of someone who is trying to pretend they aren’t woozy. She gets into bed, but doesn’t let go. He hesitates.

“Red?”

She gives him a withering stare that says about a hundred things: _This isn’t a choice_ and _I’m not scared_ and _You’re telling me you got enough sleep?_ He doesn’t oppose her request personally—far from it—but he just isn’t certain she knows what she’s doing. Even if the drug’s effects have vanished, she’s emotionally compromised at best. But that expression is…forceful.

“Red,” he says, “I don’t think—”

“Humor me.”

He humors her.

The dangerous look in her eye softens immediately as he strips to his underclothes, and when he climbs in next to her she’s practically already dozing. But still she fights it.

“Talk to me,” she mumbles.

“No,” he says, almost laughing.

“It’ll help.”

He sighs, resigned, and they lie facing each other on this narrow bed, her bad arm in between them. But he can’t think of anything to say. He touches the gauze on the back of her hand, and her eyes blink open.

He says, “I won’t let them hurt you again.”

She says, “I’m afraid sometimes we don’t have much of a say in the matter.”

“You didn’t let them. You fought back.”

“I still got hurt.”

“So did they.”

She hums and nods once, like she didn’t really hear him. Well, that’s alright.

He thinks he’ll just lie there. He thinks he’ll wait till she’s asleep and get up to do laundry, make food, wash up. But at some point he blinks, and when he opens his eyes Red is curled up in his arms, his face in her hair, and through the windows of the apartment the Cloudbank sky is shining a bright, innocent gray.

 

_i love you so much red. you know that right? it’s true. it’s true. it’s true._


End file.
